Apple Agrees to Loosen Its Grip on the App Store

Apple has struck a deal with a group of smaller app developers, agreeing to change some of the rules that have made it easy for the company to remove software programs from its App Store.<br><br>The settlement, scheduled to be announced on Thursday, would resolve a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019 and applies to app developers that made no more than $1 million per year from the App Store. The changes include limits on the rules that developers must follow and restrictions on how Apple can remove apps that violate those guidelines.<br><br>Apple had been criticized for years for policing the App Store too aggressively, treating smaller developers unfairly and removing legitimate apps without good reasons. The company has never formally disclosed how many apps it rejects from the App Store, but lawyers for the plaintiffs estimated it to be in the hundreds of thousands. Apple had also faced pressure to rewrite its rules for the App Store in response to a new law in South Korea, as well as antitrust scrutiny from regulators around the world.<br><br>**TL;DR:** Apple is going to ease up on rules for apps in the App Store, but only for devs that make &lt;$1 million.